What's the point of the mid-long run? (Read 1479 times)

Most of the training plans out there for marys have a mid-week, "mid-long" run. It has me a bit confused as to its purpose. I'm creating my own training plan for my next race, the mini-marathon in Indy, and am trying to get two "quality" or "hard" workouts in a week. One will be either a neg. split/progression run of about 5-7 miles on Monday or Tuesday. The second would be "long" runs on Saturdays ranging from 10-18 miles. I'm thinking about adding the mid-long into my HM training to see how my body responds to the added mileage, and to help me determine if I'm ready to take on a full marathon later in the year. So that's the "why" I'm considering doing it, but if I were to incorporate it into the week (8-14 mile run), what purpose (outside the obvious more miles is better concept) would it really serve? And would it be considered another "hard" day of running?

Aren't most plans asking you to also run these "mid-long" runs at a goal marathon pace? I think they are geared towards getting you used to longer distance at a goal pace, and to as stated earlier build that big base needed. For me it seems like my long runs are geared at "finishing me off" for the week, and the mid long runs are actually getting me ready for some relative speed at distance.

KISS=Keep It Simple Ssssssssweetie! I've noticed that there are so many "schedules" out there and most of them seem to have been set out by a former "fairly good runner". They will most likely have two or at least one quality workout during the week along with, of course, a long run on the weekend. You've got to realize that they were, at their prime, most likely running twice a day every day up to 100 miles a week. So if they were doing 13 workouts a week, it's 2 out of 13 that would be high quality workouts; and I'd say 3-mile worth of intervals and/or 5 to 10 miles of tempo runs, so around 10 miles of quality work; i.e. about 10% of their weekly mileage. This is something Willamona always preaches, and I totally agree with her, you've got to have solid background of mileage to support this kind of trainng structure. POQ (this is directing at you): Is this going to be your first marathon? If so, I'd strongly encourage you to throw out those "quality" workouts for now and concentrate on building up mileage. I prescribed this young lady to do a weekend's long run (starting at 1:30 and gradually worked her way up to 3:00) plus mid-week medium long run (the focus of this thread); plus have her do one or two or three, if she wants to, easy jogging or other activities on other days. I thought that would be enough for her to do 4-hour marathon. I ended up alternating the medium long run during the week with solid hill training--not running them fast but classic Lydiard hill circuit; starting at 20 minutes total (plus w-up and c-down) up to 50 minutes. This is simply because it was getting too damn hot to just run for 1:30~1:45, I wanted some change of pace. She did 3:41. If she stuck with two long/mid-long runs a week, I think she would still have run 3:45. Now, I didn't prescribe ANY pace work. I had NO idea what her marathon pace would be. I actually, in the end, thought she could run 3:30 but the day was too damn cold and windy (Chicago a year ago, not last year's) and she wasn't dressed properly and she didn't quite get proper pacing either. Now, I gave her that target pace AFTER I observed her progress and some of her long runs and one 25k race. It wasn't the other way around--"Oh, I want to break 4-hours, so for that, I need to train such-and-such pace...!" It just doesn't work out that way. If you try to do that, you'll only put pressure on yourself and get stressed out. One other thing--I did peek your training in the past month (now I know why we have the log available...); you seem to do workouts quite randomly; you did tempo run the day before long run or medium long run the day after long run, etc. You should sit down first and structure your day-to-day workouts a little more carefully. It would serve you so much better if you line them up something like: long run--easy run--easy run--tempo run--easy run...something like that. I'd say a rule of thumb is; you CAN do long run, as long as you do it nice and easy, the day after fast run; but wouldn't recommend other way around. If you insist doing some quality workouts, that's fine too but I would strongly recommend doing one long run (weekend) and one medium long run (during the week) as pre-requisit for preparation for the marathon. They would not have to progress the duration every week; in fact, fructuating them would actually work better. But, in the end, they would serve you so much better; trust me (particularly men).

Thanks everyone, for the input! If I'm understanding Mr. Inertia's point, the overarching goal is really to be "more miles" which, in turn, builds endurance. So if I add in a mid-long run it should be at an easy pace, and would not be considered a "Hard" workout. T1Dawk is approaching the mid-long from a different angle, and running it at your expected marathon pace, to me, would indicate that it is a "Hard" workout. If I ran it like that, I would then definitely need to get rid of my "speed" workout earlier in the week. This points to Nobby's suggestion of getting rid of the 'speed' work altogether. Lifesabeach, I'm pretty much the same way in that I've not read too many books on running, though I'm starting to. I followed a plan for my first HM, and while it did get me through it, I didn't feel totally prepared to really run it. The goal of the plan was to "finish", and I'm looking to do more than that now!

For what it's worth, I run mid-week long runs at the same pace I run my long runs: starting at 20% over MP and gradually getting down to 10% over MP. I take this approach for two reasons. First, I believe it's what Pftiz calls for; and second, because I find it makes these runs somewhat challenging but not overly taxing. I think these runs, and I say this based solely on personal experience, should not be too hard or too easy. I suppose if I had to classify them as one or the other, I would call them the easiest of quality workouts. To that end, I, usually do interval/tempos on Tues and MWLR on Thursday and LR on the weekend.

POQ It seems like I come fairly close to following the type of plan you are after. Have a look at my log and see what you think. Kenny

... geared toward helping me putting a plan together that is a good mix of mostly easy runs, w/one long run on the weekend, and one other either mid-long (assuming I can figure out what it should do for me!) or some speed work...

Here's what I made up that worked for me (after base mileage was built up). Think of the numbers as percentages of your total mpw : 10 easy 20 medium 10 easy 20 medium 10 easy 30 long rest I just made MWF the easy days and Tu Th the medium days. For building up the mileage base, the mediums were "easy", just longer than the normal easy days. After that, if I needed speedwork, it was on the Tu medium day. No speedwork necessary if doing some little short 10K races a couple times a month. So, e.g. Mon 7 miles easy Tue 14 miles medium Wed 7 miles easy Thu 14 miles medium Fri 7 miles easy Sat or Sun 21 miles one day, rest the other. Just what worked for me, until I started running longer...

I put all my "speed" work into my two longest runs; my long run and mid-long run.

I can see Squires-ism in that! ;o) 'when you set up a training program, you need to consider your strengths and weaknesses, situation and environment, and you need to consider your personality, temperament, likes and dislikes as well. Of course, there ARE times when you have to discipline yourself and do what you gotta do. But there's no point of doing something you'd dread--at least not too often! ;o) However, at your level (PoQ I'm talking about), it would still pay to pile up some nice easy long runs. My suggestion would be; to alternate medium long run and some fast stuff that you like to do every other week. I found it works nicely for beginners to have a 2-week cycle instead of trying to cram everything in a week. I would even alternate a long run with some variation--long run one week, not-so-long run the next; OR long flat run one week, long hilly run the next...something like that. You might also want to consider incorporating Lydiard's original hill circuit training; spring up the hill, not too fast but hard; recovery jog a bit; stride down the hill fast if the hill is NOT too steep; then do some windsprints at the bottom, or every 15 minutes or so if the hill is not too long...repeat this for up to an hour, starting however long (20 minutes?) working your way up gradually as you get stronger. With warm-up and cool-down, total of continuous running can be up to 1:30. This oughta hurt just the way you want it! ;o) My friend from Japan just wrote to me; he said he would like to try his first marathon toward the end of the year. He has picked a 10k race in February, 5k and 10k race in March and a half marathon (his first) toward the end of April... Then looking for a full marathon in November or December. This would work out really well; because he can work on his basic speed earlier before he starts working on a marathon program. Perhaps you'd like to consider a pattern like this???